I replied to a comment on 9to5mac that was embedded in a thread about Phil Schiller on the iPhone's paltry starting storage of 16 gigs. Here are a couple of bits:

Schiller will tell you ‘You can get iCloud storage which most people use these days’

As if mobile data is free and available everywhere

... followed by...

As if mobile data is free and available everywhere

It isn’t? I think it depends on where you live. In North America, South Africa and Australia, it seems to commonly have limited monthly usage and is paid per traffic transferred. In most other places, there are no transfer limits and you basically pay a flat monthly fee for a certain level of speed limit.

I'm not sure what places that comments is trying to say have these pie on the sky unlimited plans... I got the feeling that wasn't true in the UK and France, but could be conflating with overseas temporary SIMs. But this seemed to feed in fairly well with an older post of mine that said Apple wants you to stream tons, because it keeps iPhone use expensive.

I said more along those lines on 9to5, and figured I'd put that text here as well.

There's a close relationship between keeping iPhones as status items and linking them to expensive phone plans. I used mine with Ting, which is exceptionally low cost, but Apple would rather we kept shelling out for more expensive plans from the big four. Music streaming, cloud document storage, and, increasingly, video (esp cord cutters who have even cut the home Internet cord) mean iPhones users desire phatter data plans.

If people with money keep using iPhones, people will keep buying iPhones to look like they have plenty of money. Plans with lots of data is part of the cachet. Apple's going to continue to design phones to be used by those with enough expendable cash they keep expensive plans.

In other news, this is the first post made by my new Markdown editor. It's not even alpha yet, but we're getting close.

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